April 06, 2010

Liu Offers 'Sincere and Humblest Apology' to Senators

Appellate court nominee Goodwin Liu writes in a new letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he mistakenly omitted scores of materials from a background questionnaire, and he apologized to senators for not being complete in his initial response.

The letter, dated Monday, is rare for a nominee both in the scope of its disclosure and in its offer of a personal apology. Liu, nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, also detailed for senators the database searches he used to answer the questionnaire.

Republicans reacted to the omissions today with outrage, requesting that the committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), delay a planned April 16 hearing on Liu’s nomination. Last month, they criticized Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for omitting materials during his confirmation process.

Monday’s letter (PDF, Page 84) is the fourth time Liu has supplemented his nomination materials since he initially submitted them in late February. In the latest correspondence, he writes that he missed some public appearances that he should have known about initially and that he did not think to include appearances at such occasions as brown bag lunches and alumni gatherings.

“In preparing my original submission, I made a good faith effort to track down all of my publications and speeches over the years. I checked my personal calendar, I performed a variety of electronic searches, and I searched my memory to produce the original list. But I have since realized that those efforts were not sufficient,” Liu writes.

Liu, a law professor and associate dean at the University of California at Berkeley, adds that “none of the omissions in my original submission was intentional…. Moreover, I believe it is in my own interest to make the most complete disclosure I possibly can.”

In describing the process he used to answer the questionnaire, Liu lists 36 Web sites that he searched, including those of O’Melveny & Myers, where he was an associate, and Nixon Peabody, where he worked on contract. He searched Lexis Nexis, Google, and YouTube.

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), write in a letter (PDF) to Leahy today that Liu’s disclosure “essentially amounts to a new Questionnaire.” Their staff needs more time to review the materials, the senators write, and Liu’s omissions place his nomination “in jeopardy.”

“These glaring omissions were provided only after Committee staff continued to locate other additional items not disclosed by the nominee,” they write. “At best, this nominee’s extraordinary disregard for the Committee’s constitutional role demonstrates incompetence; at worst, it creates the impression that he knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work from the Committee.”

The planned hearing April 16 is the third date Democrats have tried for Liu’s confirmation hearing. It was postponed twice.

A Democratic aide notes that some previous nominees have given far less detail about their public appearances than Liu has. For example, 6th Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote to senators that “I have given numerous speeches to local bar associations, Ohio judges (through the Ohio Judicial College), The Federalist Society, and Continuing Legal Education seminars” where he “spoke from informal notes or spoke extemporaneously.” (Click here (PDF) and go to Page 4.)

Dueling conservative and liberal bloggers are alreadydebating the significance of Liu’s supplemental materials.

Comments

What bothers me is that the candidates have to disclose to the best of their abilities, within reason. Their disclosure cannot be all-encompassing, and does not HAVE to be. Sounds to me like Liu has more than met the disclosure requirements.

I don't suppose for one second that any of the existing judges have managed to comply any better with this utterly ludicrous and physically impossible requirement. Shouldn't take ten minutes with google to find things that all the prior Republican nominees omitted. Same standards for all, right? The Republicans on the Committee surely can't be engaged in mere procedural obstructionism for purely partisan motives, can they?

If ignorance of the law is no excuse, neither is, "the dog ate my homework". How about taking illegal payments, like the LA county judges, and not disclosing them. If he came from California, he's corrupt. In stead of "confirming" more criminals to the bench, they need to clean up what they've got.

Surely he should have listed all of his high school debates, the positions he took on each issue, the names of his partners and opponents in each debate, and the scores he received. And, don't forget the dinner-table discussions with relatives and friends. Why stop there?

This is nonsense. No one is in any doubt where Liu stands on major issues, and people in his position ought to be able to say something like "I have written or spoken out on many topics at many times and in many places, not all of which I can recall. But I stand by what I wrote or said and will be happy to explain my reasoning if asked." Let the would-be critics do the digging.

I think that ANYBODY who CANNOT or WILL NOT provide a full disclosure to the Senate Judiciary Committee should automatically be barred from further consideration. No more idiotic hide-the-speeches/proof of my real stances. I believe that this kind of modeling for the youth and young adults of America is ruinous. And, we educators wonder why it seems that more and more students are okay with plagiarizing, cheating on exams, lying to professors, and not accepting responsibility for their actions. It used to be that we could trust, or seemingly trust, people in places of high authority to model the type of behavior that we want and expect of Americans. Clearly, this has either changed, or I have come to a rude awakening. But, it seems that today's youth are getting the message loud and clear: it's okay to cheat, lie, deceive, and in general be dishonest. Be this the case of Liu, I question the Regents' (of U.C.) judgment and discretion in retaining such a person as associate dean and professor of law.